ANNA Hopkin will be trying to channel her national form when she takes to the blocks in the Commonwealth Games.

The Chorley swimmer is competing in the 50m and 100m freestyle as well as the 4x100m relay in the Gold Coast.

At 21 she is a British champion in the shorter individual distance and believes that victory last April, against a number of swimmers who will be competing Down Under, will stand her in good stead as she eyes a medal.

Hopkin saw off the challenge of Siobhan-Marie O’Connor in the UK final and that rivalry will be renewed in Australia while Freya Anderson, fourth in that race, is also in the England squad and Lucy Hope, who took bronze, will line up for Scotland.

Given the depth of British swimming, Hopkin, who attended Runshaw College in Leyland, wants to try and repeat her form from Sheffield in next month’s Games.

“I have just got to act as if it is the nationals,” said former Withnell Fold Primary School pupil Hopkin when explaining her approach.

“I need to keep training hard and swim through. I think because it is the Commonwealth Games there will be a lot of British swimmers competing against each other so in one sense it will be like nationals and hopefully I can swim that well again.”

Hopkin represented Chorley Marlins and Blackburn-based Gallica as a youngster but took time out from compet-itive swimming to try her hand at other sports.

And the former St Michael’s secondary school pupil is thankful she made the return.

“As a teenager I was still swimming but I wasn’t really competing because I wanted to try other sports such as gymnastics,” she said.

“Then I came back to swimming and fortu-nately it’s worked out!”